He picked up the blue contact phone. It was the line Remo used to call in. There was no dial on the phone. That didn't matter. The moment he picked up the receiver, the CURE computer was already dialing Chiun's special 800 number.
The phone rang a dozen times before someone finally picked up. Even away from the phone Mark recognized the desperately wailing woman.
"Hello," Smith said. "Master Chiun is not available at the moment. Is there something wrong?" There was more crying, more babbling. As the woman spoke, Smith eyed his computer.
"I'm sorry, I don't understand," the CURE director said. He spoke slowly and loudly, knowing full well the futility of doing so for the benefit of a person who obviously spoke no English. "May I speak with Master Chiun's caretaker? Please put Pullyang on the phone. Pullyang."
This drew a reaction from the woman. The crying turned into shrieks of agony. The woman wailed as if in pain for a few minutes, shouting her anguish into the phone, before hanging up amid a series of pitiful sobs.
Smith quickly cradled the phone. Spinning back to his computer, he tapped a few keys and then leaned back.
"I tapped the line and dumped her voice directly into the mainframes," he explained. "The translation will not be perfect, but we should at least see-"
The computer beeped and a window opened. Through narrowing eyes, Smith scanned the text. As he read, his lips thinned to razor slits of tight concern.
When he was finished, he leaned back in his chair. Mark Howard was still scanning the monitor, absorbing the data.
"Am I reading this right?" Howard asked. "This looks like she was saying her father was murdered."
"Apparently she is Pullyang's daughter," Smith said, his voice perfectly even. He adjusted his wireless glasses. "The mainframes are unable to translate all of the dialect peculiar to Sinanju, but that would seem to be the reason for both her calling here and for her emotional state."
"Wow," Mark said, shaking his head slowly. "This isn't going to sit well with Chiun. He must have told me a hundred times how the village is safe because of him. And this was the guy he trusted to watch his stuff? I'd hate to be in the shoes of whoever did it."
Smith could not disagree with his assistant's assessment. On a few occasions over the years Sinanju had been vexed by outside forces, invariably involving meddling by representatives of the Communist North Korean government. Since Pullyang was in charge of keeping watch over Chiun's treasure, Smith wondered if yet another North Korean agent had allowed greed to overcome wisdom.
The other option was a murderer among the citizens of Sinanju itself. To Smith's knowledge in the thirty years he'd known the Master of Sinanju there had not been a murder in the tiny fishing village on the West Korean Bay.
There was no doubt about one thing. This crossed a line none before had ever dared venture past.
"So what do we do?" Mark asked. "Chiun doesn't know. Do we let them finish what they're doing before we tell him?"
Smith released a sigh that was a mixture of bile and burned meat loaf.
"It would be easier," he admitted. "Certainly this is a complication none of us needs. With Remo and Chiun already skipping around the world for the Time of Succession, their activities are already too close to public. A rage-fueled vendetta on the part of the Master of Sinanju possibly directed against the North Korean government is not something I would like to see added to the mix right now."
"So we don't tell him," Howard said.
Smith shook his head. He offered something that might have started as a weary laugh but came out a tired moan.
"The only option worse than telling him would be to keep the knowledge from him." Smith sighed. Rolling his chair firmly into the desk foot well, the CURE director stretched his hands to his keyboard.
REMO CAUGHT UP to the Master of Sinanju on the steps of Czar Alexis's dingy French apartment building.
"What's wrong?" he asked, bounding down the stairs.
"I must think," Chiun replied tersely. He swept across the sidewalk to their waiting taxi.
"This can't be because of that Russian stink machine in the black bathrobe," Remo insisted. "Chiun, don't let him rattle you. I saw better hustlers than him rigging three-card-monte games on Coney Island when I was a kid."
But the Master of Sinanju didn't respond. He flung the rear door open and slipped into the cab. Remo hopped in beside him as the old man was barking orders at the cabbie.
"A little bad breath and mood lighting and you're running like French cheese?" Remo asked as the cab drew away from the curb. "That's not like you." The Master of Sinanju shot him a dark glance.
"Did you not hear the words of the wicked monk?" he snapped.
"See? There's my problem. If you'd said good monk, or happy monk or goddamn Dopey, Doc or Grumpy monk, I might put some stock in what he had to say. As it is, I listen to wicked monks about as much as I listen to crack-smoking mullahs."
"You would be wise to heed the words of this one," Chiun insisted. "He has been bestowed a gift, imparted to him by the dark forces with which he is aligned. My father knew well of him. The monk sees the future."
The words were said with such gravity that Remo dared not disagree.
"Okay, so he's a fortune-teller. So what? If he wanted to impress me, he'd predict himself a bar of soap."
"Do you not have eyes?" Chiun demanded. "Explain to me what just happened in that apartment." Shrugging exhausted surrender, Remo dropped his hands to his knees.
"I don't know, Little Father. I really don't. Maybe it was trick lighting. Maybe it was something more. Maybe you rigged it all somehow just to pull my leg. If you want to know the God's honest truth, whenever this sort of stuff happens I do my damnedest not to think about it."
"Is that what I have trained? A gangly legged ostrich with his big, dumb head stuffed in the ground? Have you seen nothing in your years as my apprentice? By now you should know well that there are forces at work in the universe that are beyond the comprehension of mere mortals. Apparently for ostrich you, that is doubly true."
"Fine," Remo said. "You want to know what I saw? I saw exactly what you did. Which is to say I don't know what the hell I saw. A hundred-year-old crown prince who looks like he's late for gym class and a Svengali monk who can Casper his way in and out of rooms. So I accept it. There. And he can tell the future. So what did he say? Watch out for the night and watch out for the day. What's that supposed to mean other than typical ambiguous fortune-telling gibberish?"
"He told us to beware the false night and day," the Master of Sinanju insisted.
"Okay, so what does that mean?"
"I don't know. But we must further beware of the hand that reaches from the grave. Darkness comes from the cold sea. For both of us, for he said Masters of Sinanju."
"Are you telling me you bought into that bullshit about someone being alive who was dead?"
"It seems unlikely," Chiun replied. "While the secret to true necromancy was supposed to be known to the priests of ancient Egypt, it was lost many years ago."
"I know necro is dead. Who the hell's Nancy?"
The old Korean gave a withering look. "It is the raising of the dead, numskull."
"I hate to break it to you, Little Father, but if the world starts vomiting up the living dead at us, it won't exactly limit either one of us. We've been tossing bad guys overboard to the sharks for more years than I like to think about. And there's a whole slew of dead chambermaids and bellboys who got in the way of your TV over the years. Not to mention ex-girlfriends, pissed-off gods and the occasional poor slob who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. If we've got some oogidy-boogidy from the great beyond stalking us, he's going to have to take a number. "